The leader of the House of Commons has published guidance instructing politicians on how to spot and combat “conspiracy theories.”
Commissioned by Ms. Mordaunt, the report was compiled by groups including Full Fact, Tell MAMA (Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks), and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD).
Threat
Ms. Mordaunt said: “The proliferation of conspiracy theories across the UK is deeply disturbing. They are deliberate campaigns to spread disinformation and fear.“If they go unchallenged we risk the public being conned and their well-being potentially damaged.
“These campaigns are also a threat to the health of our democracy. It is essential that we give the public and their representatives the tools they need to combat this phenomenon.”
The report says that conspiracy theories are particularly concerning for democracies as they “erode trust in democratic institutions, including financial institutions, the justice system, healthcare providers, in governments at every level, and in regulated media outlets, undermining the most basic foundations of democratic rule.”
It defines the term as claiming “the existence of a person or a covert and powerful group of people or an organisation with evil intent that seeks to harm or change existing orders. This group is usually presented as using proxies to help hide and carry out its plans. These proxies may be politicians, the media, financial institutions, armed forces, or any form of government agency, all working for this ‘dark force’ to satisfy its malicious intent.”
The report adds that numerous conspiracy theories are rooted in anti-Jewish racism.
“The common notion shared by many conspiracy theories, of a secret cabal that seeks world domination by controlling world events, promoting conflicts and financial instability, can find its roots in age-old antisemitism,” it says.
Climate Lockdowns
The ISD focused on the subject of “climate lockdowns” in the report, saying that people believe that climate change is used as a pretext for “green tyranny” to enable state control and strip people of their civil liberties.ISD is funded by many government departments as well as foundations and institutions. Some of these include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, former eBay Chairman Pierre Omidyar, George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, as well as activist investor and Extinction Rebellion donor Chris Hohn’s the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation.
The Antisemitism Policy Trust said the Ukraine War provided “new terrain” for conspiratorial narratives.
It said that believers tend to adopt the opposite position to anything that is considered a “normie” majority view.
The trust noted that this is illustrated well by variants of the “current thing” meme, in which many widely held and “often unrelated concepts are dismissed as merely the fads of an unthinking and conformist populace.”
WEF
The report also noted the popularity of Danish MP Ida Auken’s quote “you’ll own nothing and be happy,” published on the World Economic Forum (WEF) website, which became a meme mocking the WEF’s perceived techno-communism.Towards the end of the report, MPs are warned that they should be wary not to spread conspiracy theories, as the “victim may also be a public institution or the government, who may lose credibility and trust.”
Other subjects include chemtrails, QAnon, and the Great Replacement.
Ms. Mordaunt’s Labour counterpart, Lucy Powell, said the guide was a “must-read for MPs and candidates” who had “an important role in leading their communities, speaking on the national stage with clarity and truth, and against mis- and disinformation which can harm communities and our country.”
Danny Stone, chief executive of the Antisemitism Policy Trust, said, “One doesn’t have to fall particularly far down any conspiracy theory rabbit hole before finding antisemitic themes, tropes, or ideas.”
He added, “It is imperative that parliamentarians and parliamentary candidates can spot, and certainly avoid promoting and amplifying, conspiracy myths.”
